'From House to Home': The Structure of a Soul Journey in Christina Rossetti's Devotional Writing

Abstract:

This thesis examines how Christina Rossetti uses a specific narrative structure I
term the soul journey, to help her readers navigate the chaos of an ever-changing social
and religious culture of Victorian England. Foundational to my analysis of her writing is
the literary influence of Dante Alighieri, John Bunyan, and Alfred Lord Tennyson;
specifically how their writing demonstrates the spiral structure of the soul journey. Also
vital to this study is Rossetti’s devotion to Anglo-Catholic liturgical practices deriving
from the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s in England. The leaders of the
Oxford Movement, or Tractarians, sought reform of the Church of England. As part of
their mandate for reform, they called for a renewed emphasis on the Sacraments,
including the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Rossetti, who regularly attended Christ
Church, a parish at the centre of the Oxford Movement, was exposed early in her life to
the teachings of the Tractarians; thus, her own writing shares elements of Tractarian
thought. This thesis will establish that patterns of worship in the Anglo-Catholic liturgy,
including the Communion service and liturgical calendar, mirror the spiral structure of
the soul journey. First, this narrative structure is used to examine overall patterns in
Rossetti’s devotional writing and then applied to the narrative poem, “From House to
Home.” Second, the soul journey structure is used to explore the themes of hope and
hospitality in Rossetti’s writing. Details of Anglo-Catholic liturgy, with a focus on the
sacrament of the Eucharist and Rossetti’s own devotional practices, will be applied to a
close reading of “Goblin Market” and “A Better Resurrection.” I conclude with an indepth
study of Rossetti’s devotional prose work Time Flies and I reveal how Rossetti
reworks the repetitive and mechanized conventions of industrial time to navigate the soul
journey through liturgical time as preparation for the afterlife.

Description:

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English, University of Regina. iv, 122 p.